Without noticing, she had finished the coffee in her cup. Nanoda stared at the stacks of documents — large and small — spread across the table, and felt a dull throb start behind her eyes.
"I assumed the Empire would fall into chaos without an Emperor. I didn't expect..."
"Change always outpaces plans. But that's precisely why Gaderia had some time to prepare."
Even with age beginning to slow him, Aaron remained sharp — and that was ultimately why Nanoda had felt comfortable leaving Gaderia in his hands. It was still hard to imagine that this man had once been so down on his luck that he'd resorted to highway robbery.
In simple terms: the Northern Empire and Gaderia had entered a state of all-out war. The situation Nanoda had pieced together from rumour and hearsay was, if anything, an understatement — the reality was worse.
Not only the Northern territories, but several of the Central Lands' principalities had publicly declared support for Gaderia's independence — only to quietly turn around and strangle Gaderia's trade the moment they heard the full Northern Empire had encircled it. Strategic aid was out of the question entirely. Nanoda supposed they should count themselves lucky those fence-sitters hadn't sent armies to stab them in the back.
What had saved them was the covert assistance of the Fortified City of Weise, a handful of conservative peace-faction nobles, and the intelligence network Aaron had quietly built up years in advance.
Over these years, Gaderia had also — through Yuna's introductions — recruited a corps of mages from the Continental Magic Association.
Qual's newly invented magical killing weapons could be operated even by those whose Mana was exhausted or who couldn't use magic at all, and they hit hard. Concentrated suppressive fire had cut down enemies by the score, and they had proven their worth decisively in siege engagements.
On top of that, Gaderia was home to no small number of high-tier combatants — Great Demons and Demon Generals among them.
Between all of these factors, Gaderia had managed, just barely, to hold its own against the Imperial army's siege assaults — never quite winning, but never losing either.
The war had ground down into a stalemate. These days, the Empire and Gaderia existed in a state of sporadic skirmishing and prolonged standoff.
Both sides had bled heavily over the past ten years.
Gaderia's reserves had been burned through almost entirely within that same decade.
The Northern Empire, still possessed of slightly more breathing room, appeared to have settled on a strategy: recuperate, harass continuously, and slowly drain Gaderia dry.
A newly developed mid-sized territory holding out against the Empire's full military campaign across years of war — it was very nearly unprecedented in recorded history.
As she read through Gaderia's war records from these past years, Nanoda suddenly noticed something deeply wrong.
"Where's Aura? I don't see a single battle report from her. And the Demon soldiers — why are Jane and Qual the only Great Demons listed as having fought?"
She could find records of Jane and Qual in the field, but nothing at all from Aura or her subordinates.
She looked up at Aaron. His face was written over with something bitter.
"Lady Aura..."
"She's dead?"
Seeing Aaron hesitate, Nanoda voiced what she'd already begun to suspect. After the Empire's earlier assassination attempt on Aura, Nanoda had come to see her as rather fragile. Though the theory had its holes — with Jane around, Aura shouldn't have been easy to kill outright; she ought to have at least been able to hold on long enough for Jane to help.
"No, no, no." Aaron waved his hands quickly.
"Good. So she's alive — which means she did something, didn't she."
Aaron exhaled slowly before he answered. "Not long after you disappeared, Lady Aura used her Magic of Obedience to take the remaining ordinary Demon Race members in Gaderia and left with them. The Imperial army came marching in shortly after."
"That woman..." Nanoda pressed a hand to her forehead.
Had she squeezed Aura too hard for too long, and finally wrung out a streak of defiance? No — perhaps Aura had never been willing from the beginning, only kept in line by the Magic of Obedience. With no one to hold her, she'd probably gone back to doing exactly as she pleased: wandering off to conscript some new headless army.
"And it was precisely because Lady Aura left that our fight against the Empire became so gruelling. Had she stayed, the threat level of the Imperial army would have dropped dramatically."
Nanoda gave a slow nod at that.
The Magic of Obedience, deployed against large numbers of lower-ranked combatants, could turn the tide of an entire engagement. Gaderia could have seized control of the Imperial forces and turned them back on their own lines — instead of simply absorbing blow after blow on the defensive.
"That's not all. When Lady Aura left, she took Lady Linie with her on the pretext of growing stronger to avenge you — and a minor Demon officer named Draht as well. I don't have a clear picture of the exact reasoning; Lady Aura planned it all very quietly. By the time I realised what was happening, they had already gone."
Right. So Aura's little suicide squad had shipped out again.
"Next time I see her, I'm going to sit her down for a very thorough re-education."
Nanoda made herself a solemn promise: when she found Aura again, there would be consequences. She'd discipline her with the Magic of Obedience until she couldn't sit straight.
"I did send people to search for Lady Aura's whereabouts. Regrettably, she appears to have gone further north — Imperial eyes are everywhere up there, and my agents couldn't move freely. The Central and Southern Lands are a different matter; I still have some reach there."
As he spoke, Aaron leaned forward and refilled Nanoda's cup from the coffee pot.
"Beyond the matter of Lady Aura, there's another pressing problem. Fortunately, now that you're back, it may finally be solvable."
"Is the Southern Kingdom sending troops to help the Empire attack us?"
Nanoda recalled the talk she had overheard at the tavern — the three-sided encirclement theory.
"No. That is a concern, but it hasn't come to anything serious. The more immediate matter is this: approximately three months ago, the Hero paid Gaderia a visit."
At the word "Hero," Nanoda set her teacup straight back down.
"Hero Himmel? What did he come here for?"
The old promise she had made with the Hero surfaced suddenly in her memory.
"He talked the Southern Kingdom's king out of sending troops, and looked in on Gaderia's progress while he was at it. After that, he left." Aaron leaned back against the sofa, ran a hand over his bald head, and smiled slowly.
"What surprised me was that he raised no objection to Gaderia's model of humans and Demons coexisting. He left looking more or less satisfied with what he saw. We have him to thank, in no small part — Gaderia cannot afford another enemy right now."
"It seems I owe him a favour."
Nanoda looked at her own reflection shimmering in the surface of the brown coffee, and breathed out a slow breath, scattering the rising steam.
"So then — what is it that's troubling you and Gaderia right now?"
Aaron's expression shifted at once, becoming grave. He sat up straight from the sofa and tapped a single finger against the tabletop.
"About a year ago, our allied Fortified City of Weise ran into... a problem."
"They cracked under Imperial pressure and betrayed us?"
"No — quite the opposite. They never betrayed us. Rather, it was Macht who did something extraordinary."
"Don't tell me..."
Nanoda felt an inexplicable premonition settle over her.
"One year ago — in a single night — the entirety of the Fortified City of Weise was transmuted into a City of Gold!"
Dun-dun-dun.
Aura's departure had already given Nanoda a vague sense that something like this was coming.
Though the timing was different — far sooner than she had expected — Weise had become a City of Gold regardless.
Because Nanoda had disappeared, everything seemed to have quietly corrected itself, slipping back onto its original course.
Was this... the convergence of the world-line?
Was all of it simply the choice of fate?
____
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